


The Ash Grove

by tb_ll57



Series: In The Quiet Heart Is Hidden [1]
Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Between Books, Gap Filler, Gen, Sibling Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 11:50:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2108826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She swallowed down sharp and painful longing.  Thom's mouth curled, not quite a smile, but understanding.  He kissed her chin, and tucked his head beneath it.  Alanna wrapped her arm about him.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ash Grove

**Author's Note:**

> Down yonder green valley where streamlets meander,  
> When twilight is fading I pensively rove.  
> Or at the bright noontide in solitude wander  
> Amid the dark shades of the lonely ash grove.
> 
> 'Tis there where the blackbird is cheerfully singing,  
> Each warbler enchants with his note from the tree.  
> Ah, then little think of sorrow or sadness;  
> The ash grove enchanting spells beauty for me.
> 
> ~The Ash Grove, Welsh folk song

They buried their father just before dusk.

Two men lowered the linen-wrapped body to the earth. One was only just into his long trousers, his beard growing in patchily on cheeks not yet roughened from the wind in the fields. He sneaked sideways looks at the twins as he snatched off his cap, head bowed whilst the priest began the invocation. Coram had the honour of the shovel, sprinkling a clod of dirt over the grave. Thom wrenched the petals from their stem, sharing the palmful with Alanna. Together they scattered the rose over the body, and stepped back. Coram began to dig in earnest, joined by the boy. The priest, a wizened elder with whispy grey whiskers dancing in the breeze, droned without noticing or caring that no-one truly listened.

Thom freed a hand from his thick wool wrap, and sneaked it across the distance to Alanna's. His small finger twined with hers. Alanna drew her scarf close about her nose, shivering. It would snow tonight.

Coram's palm was stained dark when he laid it on Alanna's shoulder. 'That's done, la- lass,' he said, not quite stumbling on that. Here she was Alanna again, wearing a borrowed dress and hiding her shorn hair beneath a feminine veil. It was, she thought, a strange thing, that her disguise had come to feel more like home; and here, home now, she felt as though she were anything but herself.

The bearded youngster helped her onto her horse, and walked it for her, not knowing that the proper young lady could have ridden break-neck down the mountain and never shaken her seat, had she been wearing trousers like the men and not stuck side-saddle in her skirts. Thom's horse was led by hand, as well, but from necessity, and he accepted it without comment, his head down, mind already elsewhere.

 

**

 

'I hardly remember this room.' Alanna dragged a fingertip over the rim of their father's chair. She could picture him in it, back turned away, toward the fire. His face was harder to picture. It had been a long time since she'd seen it, longer since she'd seen it turned toward her.

'Someone's been in to clean,' Thom observed. He showed her his glove, free of dust. 'I've heard he threatened to turn the maids to frogs if they dared. They must believe the magic died with him.'

'Or they only humoured a bent old man.'

'He wasn't old,' Thom said, mild only from weariness. 'And he wasn't bent. He just never got over her.'

The bed was made, with fresh sheeting and a faded but well-woven woolen bolster. Alanna hoisted herself onto the frame, which creaked mightily at her weight. She hiked up her skirts, tugging at her boots. They clattered to the floor, and she peeled off her stockings, tossing them aside. She covered her bared toes with the bolster, wiggling them beneath its weight.

Thom took care of her wimple, nimbly finding the pins and wrapping them in the soft silk. He combed his fingers through her hair as he freed it, stroking it out to fan her shoulders. 'It's almost long enough you could have passed.'

'Best not to risk it. No-one here knows about our switch.'

'Maude and Coram.'

'I've barely seen Maude.'

'She'll avoid you, I reckon.' Thom dropped his chin on her shoulder. It felt so effortlessly normal that she almost didn't realise it had been years since he'd done that. She wet her lips, but said nothing. 'Coram was looking sharpish at us. You haven't been terrorising him.'

'He won't give us up. He's in too deep.'

'And he cares too deeply for you.'

He was warm against her. And their hands had found each other again. Father's chair sat empty in the corner of her vision. She refused to look directly at it. 'I don't ever want to love like that,' she said, and they both knew it wasn't Coram she meant.

Anyway, Thom eviscerated her declaration with his usual incisive cuts. 'So if I died tomorrow you'd feel nothing?'

She inhaled, and held it. 'You know I would.'

'You won't be like Father. You're stronger than he was.' Thom sat up with a sigh, and leant against the bedpost instead, tugging dispiritedly at the hanging, digging at a splinter in the headboard with his thumbnail. 'I'm Lord of this place,' he said. 'Somehow I never really thought I would be.'

That was why they'd cleaned. Used to palace protocol, where suites were assigned by rank and visiting nobles jockeyed for the best, Alanna looked about with keen eyes, noting the clues she'd overlooked in a lifetime of never seeing anything different from the way it had always been. Father's clothes had been emptied from the cupboard. The books remained, but shelved. Mother's portrait, the small pewter frame that held a parchment marked with ink, not paint, had been removed from the table and hung on the wall. Where it had sat there was now a writing desk with a fresh pot of ink, a new quill. The accounts were set out, ready for review. The signet and the red wax candle were at the right hand, not the left, where her father had always used it. They'd made the room over for Thom, the new Lord of Trebond.

That meant, she thought, dismayed, that she'd have been removed from the nursery as well. They would have opened Mother's room for her.

She cleared her throat. 'Will you stay to take up title?'

'I suppose I should.' Thom ravaged his lower lip with his teeth, in the fight to keep his temper. A lesson they'd both had to learn, these past years apart. 'I'm so close,' Thom whispered, tightly controlled, his grip on her hand like iron. 'I know I can be great, Alanna. But I need time. I can't do it from here. I'll be just a middling mage if I stay here. Never able to use my Gift for more than threatening maids. I'd rather die.'

'I could do it, maybe,' she said, unsure, but responding to the unspoken need in that. As much as she'd always wanted to be a knight, Thom wanted as much, maybe even more. 'Lots of younger sons administer estates without title. I'm closer, anyway, in Corus.'

'You would do that for me?'

'You're my brother.'

'And you'd be better at it than me, anyway.' Thom's cheeks were hollow, his eyes tired, when he looked at her. 'You care. I've never been good at that. You make me sorry I don't.'

'You'd learn.' She pulled at his wrist, til he came with it, and fetched up against her. She wrapped an arm about his neck and held him near. Their hearts were beating in time, and she closed her eyes, listening to it.

 

**

 

They tested each other in the hills where they could go unobserved. They'd played there as lonely children, friendless in part for the isolation of their fief, in part for the nature of twins who needed no others. They'd invented a dozen secret languages, conjured their first illusions-- been roundly whipped there by the standing stones, when they'd been caught by Father's seneschal. But now they battled, alone in the wind and the gathering storm, confident in each other's abilities and sure they could never hurt each other.

Alanna wore Thom's trousers, but Lightning had made the journey from the capitol, and it sung in her hand, whistling as it cut the air. Thom was limned with the violet of their Gift, his hands glowing. Alanna, after the practise she'd come to adopt as her swordsmanship improved, was silent, refraining from the insults and the shouts and even the grunts of effort that most men made. Her quiet often unnerved her opponents. But Thom was silent, too. The ploy of playing dumb to avoid standing out at the Mithran cloisters had forced him practise his craft alone and in the dark of night where he could go unobserved. His mouth didn't move, his voice never gave life to the words of spells that other magic users would need.

Alanna blocked the first sally, rocks that lifted from the ground and flew at her. She deflected two with Lightning and ducked the third and fourth. The fifth she flung back at him, and rushed him, swinging fearlessly for his vulnerable body. He raised fire, forcing her to dance back. An ogre appeared, hideously horned and drooling acidic ooze that sizzled where it hit the grass. Alanna battled down its club and struck it through the heart. It vanished with a howl. He summoned a whirlwind, swirling dirt and dust from the mountains and forcing her to run. It chased her merrily, but she was faster, and had plenty of room to go, in the treeless expanse. Thom could not sustain it, and it died away in minutes. Alanna, unwinded thanks to the hard work of the exercise field at training, was back before him immediately, ready with a strike. Thom yelped in surprise, but without embarrassment he did what no knight would do, and fled. Alanna was laughing as she gave him chase. He fired bolts of magic at her, and she threw herself into a roll, coming up poised to one knee with Lightning before her. Thom whirled with eldritch gathering in a ball between his palms. He flung the fireball. Alanna had time to bite her lip, wondering how she'd get out of this one. She closed her eyes, and raised Lightning high. She had to speak the spell, hurried words tumbling over each other, but they worked. Lightning absorbed Thom's fireball, purple slithering over the blade and vanishing.

'Yield,' they said at the same time, and grinned at each other.

'I see you're not pretending your Gift doesn't exist anymore,' Thom said, flopping down beside her on the pile of their cloaks. He drank from their waterskin and passed it.

'Not after the Black City.' Alanna tilted the skin back to drink. She spilled a bit in her palm and wiped sweat from her face. Thom grimaced as she wiped at him, as well, and dried himself on his sleeve.

'I wish I'd been there,' he said then, not for the first time. 'So selfish of you, not to save me any demons.'

'If I had I'd not have left that place alive,' she pointed out. 'As it was I thought for sure Jon would have me burnt at the stake.'

'He wouldn't have.'

'Sent back to Trebond in disgrace, then,' she admitted. Thom sprawled on his back, finding her knee to rest his head. She traced the whorl of his ear, seeking the little nick where she'd cut him, wrestling too long ago to remember exactly. 'I wish you had been there. I wouldn't have been so scared.'

'I don't even believe you were.'

'I was! Terrified. Just not too terrified to fight.'

'Now that I do believe.' The gust of wind that washed over them raised simultaneous shivers, but Thom only yawned, and Alanna sat back on her elbows. It would likely rain them out long before they made it back to the keep. There was no point attempting to outrun it. 'You never did say how he found you out,' Thom added idly.

Glad he couldn't see her face, Alanna rubbed at her heated cheeks. 'The Ysandir knew,' she mumbled. 'They... my clothes.' She gestured vaguely.

Thom rolled to stare at her. 'You mean to tell me the Prince of the Realm has seen you nude?'

Now she knew her face was flaming. 'There wasn't anything I could do about it!'

'Shocking and scandalous,' he scolded her. He jabbed at her ribs, and she laughed, twisting ticklishly away. 'You absolutely must defy every convention, mustn't you? Bad enough we let you wear trousers, you'd rather wear nothing at all!'

'Let?' Alanna retorted, and got her revenge, pinning him and shoving at his overtunic to attack his ribs. 'You're not a masterful sorcerer yet, brother of mine, and I can still beat you blue!'

Thom thrashed and batted at her hands in vain, his helpless giggles cracking between manly baritone and boyish tenor. Alanna finally let him loose when the pitch of his laughter began to hitch in need of air, and he gave her one final poke as he collapsed in relief, shaking. Alanna threw herself down beside him, just as the sky opened up and the rain began to fall in gusting sheets. Still laughing, Thom freed one of their cloaks, drawing it over them. He rolled tight to her, pulled the hood over their heads. They rested close, knees knocking, noses almost touching.

'This is everything,' Alanna said spontaneously. 'In this moment. This is everything.'

'In this moment,' Thom agreed, and her heart twisted, to know what they both knew. For this moment only. They'd be apart again tomorrow, her back to Corus, to Jon, to her dreams. Thom to the mountains, plumbing the secrets of the dark beyond the veil, gone where she refused to follow. She swallowed down sharp and painful longing. Thom's mouth curled, not quite a smile, but understanding. He kissed her chin, and tucked his head beneath it. Alanna wrapped her arm about him.

They were soaked to the bone when they trudged mud through the kitchen, and Maude rapped both of them on the knuckles with her wooden spoon, though gently, while Coram shook his head and commented in purposefully audible grumbles that they were both far too old for such indignities. They stripped to their smallclothes like children and dried out before the great kitchen hearth, slurpring cups of broth as Maude washed them roughly with an old cloth. Coram slipped away to hide Lightning with his things, and returned with a map to plot their journey back to Corus. Maude would accompany Thom and was none to pleased at the notion, but there were higher spirits all around than the last time they'd done this. Secrets had become as comfortable as second skins.

They parted at the head of the stairs, Lord Thom and Lady Alanna, but while Maude lingered with the candle and pretended not to eavesdrop, Thom turned to her and took her hand. He slid their father's signet ring over her finger. It was too large for her hand, and slid til Thom righted it and closed her fist about it.

'I don't know what I would do without your help,' Thom said. He'd never in his life said love, but Alanna heard beyond the words. She'd never needed him to say it.

'We'll see each other soon again,' she promised, her throat tight and her stomach clenched oddly.

'Maybe,' Thom shrugged, relentlessly practical, knowing the years of hard work still laying ahead of them. 'Will you miss me?'

'Of course.'

He smiled. As it always had, it brought a mirrored response from her. 'Good night, Thom,' she said.

'Good night, Alanna.'


End file.
